"The transporters are always careful when maneuvering, aren't they? But I am not sure if the Klux even have their order started. We are still making half of their initial shipment of Replicators, and they only brought the factory online with the new Materials Printers half a day ago." Max explained.
"They can wait. The customer is far enough away that the difference in speed will make a huge difference, even without you opening a portal to them." Darrell dismissed the crawling pace of the transports as nothing to be concerned about since a one-ship wait for the portal was still much better than spending days making their way here in the traditional manner.
[Sir, the Replicators are finished, and the Shuttle is loaded. We can send it to the surface at any time.] The maintenance lab, which was in charge of making the customer's orders, informed Max.
[If the crew is trained enough to safely pilot the shuttle to the surface and back, let them go. Just give them some training materials so that they can learn what the ship is capable of.] Max replied, glad to be finished with their side of the trade deal.
Once the Cruisers were safely through and clear of the portal, a brand new Tarith Reaver Family trade vessel made its way through the portal, requesting clearance to dock with the station.
It was slightly larger than the Cutters but clearly based on the same design. It was sleek, with flowing lines and no hard edges, and wider in the back for extra cargo space, keeping the triangular top profile. This was one of the cargo-specific Warp 10 vessels that the Moon Base shipyards had just finished.
[Commander Keres, Miss Rage, it is a pleasure to see you again. This is Tarith Domond of the Reaver Vessel Blood Mist.] The other Captain greeted them.
"Did you just place the portal right beside the Tarith Family station so they would get the first chance at everything?" Max asked Nico before responding to the other Captain.
"I'm hurt. I wouldn't do something so underhanded. I put it right next to the Moonbase, and we just so happen to control the region around the main planet." Nico replied with false dignity.
[It is indeed a pleasure, Captain. Congratulations on the fine new vessel. She looks like a real money maker.] Max replied.
He had to search his memories to recall who the man was. He had only met him once at the General's wedding, and at that point, the man had been without a vessel of his own due to damages in the preceding battles.
The ship was impressively armed, though Max knew it only carried a single wing of Mecha as a defensive force. Any more would cut into their cargo capacity. The ship sported an Orbital Lance grade front Disruptor, accompanied by sixteen Ion Bombard Arrays mounted along the hull for 360-degree coverage.
Not many vessels would dare to take on such a monstrous attack craft, which sported more firepower than even the Cruisers of most nations. If anyone thought that the new Reaver trade ships would be traditional, lightly armed targets, they were in for an unpleasant shock.
Assuming that they could catch one to attack it, that was.
The newly built Klux factory lines had been busy since they were assembled, and the moment that the Blood Mist docked, they began loading crates into the hold. They didn't have enough stockpiled to load it with the large cranes and were using forklifts to bring in the crates as they came off the line, but it was more efficient than some of the poorly organized facilities where the Captain had loaded before.
At the very least, they had started loading as soon as he arrived instead of needing most of a day to organize the effort to get the cargo to his ship after his arrival.
[Do you need us to open a secondary portal for you to the customer?] Max asked once the portal to Rae 5 was closed, and their business was officially completed.
[No worries, they will still be a day or two to finish loading the entire hold at this rate. It would be great to have a portal of our own, but nothing smaller than a Colony Ship has the output to make that even remotely feasible.] Captain Domond told him with a hint of greed in his voice.
That was understandable. What merchant wouldn't want a vessel with fifty times as much cargo capacity and the ability to instantly move between star systems? Max had considered moving between potential allies that way but had decided that the chance to intercept signals along the way and pull in unexpected allies was more important while they were traveling through these more populated areas of space.
None of the systems should be unaware of what was going on in the region, and the chance that some of them might change their mind when they saw the mighty Colony Ship moving near their borders was too good to pass up.
The goal was to pull as much of humanity as possible into this alliance after all.
[Klux Station, Terminus will be departing in five minutes. Thank you for being so cooperative, and we wish you better days ahead.] Max informed their new allies.
[It was a pleasure doing business with you, Terminus. Good luck on your journey.] Lord Joseph answered, and Max could see that the signal originated from the new shuttle, which was on its first journey to the system's asteroid belt, looking for suitable source material for their production. That wasn't normally a job for a planetary leader, but Klux was an odd place, to begin with.
Right on schedule, Admiral Drake maneuvered Terminus away from the station, flashing their exterior lights in a farewell to their fellow Reavers, before taking the ship to Warp 5 and heading toward the edge of the Death Wind Territory.
Their first obstacle would be the border nations, which had kept the Death Wind Territory under sanctions for millennia. The Reavers intended to bypass them for now, but Max was hoping to make a deal along the way, so he wasn't willing to portal past their territory just yet.
